Burned
by Izzy
Summary: MoodyTonks. "The worst fear of a Metamorphagus is fire."


Izzy here, with my fanfic, "Burned," the only piece of Remus/Tonks that I will ever write, though it is in fact Moody/Tonks and Remus/Sirius. This is the only way I see this relationship happening. Her POV, and my first story that I can say without a doubt is rated R. They're all Rowlings'. 

Burned   
By Izzy 

The worst fear of a Metamorphagus is fire. Uncontrollable, raging fire which traps you. 

A minor burn causes no harm, and an extra-tough Metamorphagus can withstand some pretty bad burns, but suffer no permanent damage. But if you get burned badly enough, you lose the ability to change. You automatically revert to the form you were born as, and stay that way. And it's a general rule that the original form of a Metamorphagus is very plain. I'm no exception. 

But I've never had any physical burns that had any hope of causing that damage. I know better then to handle an open flame unless I have to, and when I do, I concentrate hard enough that I don't have any accidents. I can mess up anything else, but when it comes to fire, I do what it takes to keep myself safe. Death Eaters have tried to use it as a weapon against me, but I've had ways of making sure they didn't succeed. 

Instead I've learned that the fatal burn doesn't have to be physical, nor the reversion into a dull mass. 

Maybe if I'd realized that my heart could be burned the same way, I wouldn't have been so reckless with it. Old Mad-Eye Moody definitely qualified as reckless. He was called "Mad" for a reason, in fact, a good number of them that made the seventy-year age difference the least of the reasons why he wasn't a good idea, and led him to give up on ever getting laid again, as he told me shortly before he did after all, thanks to yours truly. 

If excuses can be excuses, I didn't realize at the time what I was getting into. Alastor had a certain image:paranoia, sense of his own humour, no sense of anyone else's, and passionate about nothing except combating dark magic. When I mentioned once to Hestia that we were banging, she expressed a question on how I didn't get injured from his skin, which had hardened by countless curses, but then I remindedher I could harden my skin right back. I though it'd be just plain sex, with some affection, but nothing serious. 

You prudes can call me a slut now, but it wasn't quite like that. It's rather hard to explain. I think it was basically that I thought it a good idea for both of us. I guess I was wrong there. 

Because at some point, we unlocked something, in him, in me, or in both of us, I don't know. Passion doesn't describe it adequately, it was more a power that seized both of us and took our relationship careening in a direction that neither of us had ever intended to go. Something beyound anything either of us imagined we could ever have felt. 

Don't ask me what caused it. Some word one of us said, some look we shared, at some point, that made it all go spinning. Noone knows how people fall in love, which is perhaps why it's such a hazard. 

It had its good points, I suppose. Had it stayed on a casual level, we would have been perfect together. He's a bit bizarre, but I've always liked bizarre. And if you could deal with all the quirks, he's a great companion. He does have a sense of humour that extends to others; you just have to know how to find it, and I always could. In fact, I might have kept him from *really* going mad. The run-in with Crouch, jr and the year spent in the trunk hurt his mental state more then most people realize. Most people think he was already crazy enough that a year in a trunk couldn't do any more damage. 

I still shudder deliciously when I remember what it was like to make love to him. To give in so completely to him, he who wanted me so, and to have him back. Much of my life had blurred now, but there are certain things I'll always remember. His hands touching my shoulders, then running down, making my skin tingle. His breathing in my ear, turning into groans that reverberated through my spine when we came together. His skin beneath my hands, which I explored until I could tell you from memory the exact texture of every inch of him. The way we moved together, him always on top, because being on the bottom brought back too many memories of curses for him; feeling him between my legs, so hard and fast against me until he drove me over the edge. He always made me scream. 

I think, if there had been time, the passion would have cooled harmlessly. If we had both lived, we would have been all right, and however much I burned, it wouldn't have hurt me. 

But that was the big problem. We were both devoted to the Order of the Phoenix, willing to lay down our lives at a second's notice, regardless of whatever we felt. And from the start of our affair, before it got out of hand, we agreed that the Order had to come first, whatever happened. And we managed to actually stick to that, to the bitter end. 

Still, I'm very glad I wasn't on that final mission, when Alastor sacrificed himself to save Harry, who almost immediately went on to kill the Dark Lord. Had I been there, I honestly don't know if I could have stood by and let him do it. 

He was killed by an Avada Kedavra curse from Draco Malfoy, who escaped charges, and my fury combined with my already overwhelming grief to consume me even more then my love for him. I burned with a fire that had a sick quality to it, one that at a less potent amount I am sure would have had the same eventual effect on me. 

I got young Malfoy convicted, though it took me two years to do it, by which time my heart had turned to ashes. I watched him be dragged off to Azkaban, and no longer had even the ability to be satisfied. 

And then, I married Remus. 

Remus had been burnt the same way, of course. His love affair with Sirius Black had a rough start even in his school years, and he told me once how he had found himself unable to stop loving Sirius even when he believed him to have betrayed them. But thirteen years had made reconciliation hard. They had finally come back together, only for Remus to lose him a year later. After such an emotional roller coaster, anyone would be burnt out for a very long time. 

The funny thing is, everyone thinks us the perfect couple. Noone knew that there was anything serious between me and Alastor, and even after my relentless prosecution of Draco, they still don't seem to have guessed. What was going on between Remus and Sirius is a bit more well known, but it had been five years by the time we were married; plenty of time in most people's eyes to mourn and move on. Everyone talks about how adorable we are, how lucky we are to have each other. 

I don't really call anyone lucky if they're married to someone they don't love, or doesn't love them, or both. Remus likes me a lot, but he could never love me in that way. I don't know if he's even capable of loving a woman like that, and I've never seen the point in asking. 

As for me, sometimes I find it hard to believe that I'm done with romantic love when I'm not even 30 yet, but I don't want to go through what I've gone through with Alastor again. 

Noone knows why a fierce burn keeps a Metamorphagus from shaping again, but I sometimes wonder if it's because the skin is afraid of being burnt again. 


End file.
